Best 1141 quotes in «historical quotes» category

As president of the American Historical Association, I started a programme to make dissertations into e-books in 1999. Before I knew it, I was involved in other electronic projects. Harvard invited me to become director of the libraries in 2007.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

As such the meaning of hegemony is subject to varying interpretations depending on how the historical role of the United States is interpreted.

As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.

As you see, I bear some resentment and some scars from the years of anti-genre bigotry. My own fiction, which moves freely around among realism, magical realism, science fiction, fantasy of various kinds, historical fiction, young adult fiction, parable, and other subgenres, to the point where much of it is ungenrifiable, all got shoved into the Sci Fi wastebasket or labeled as kiddilit - subliterature.

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth.

At least I've had to come to that in my life, to realize that this stuff called failure, this stuff, this debris of historical trauma, family trauma, you know, stuff that can kill your spirit, is actually raw material to make things with and to build a bridge. You can use those materials to build a bridge over that which would destroy you.

At the end of the first half-century of engine-driven flight, we are confronted with the stark fact that the historical significance of aircraft has been primarily military and destructive.

At the end of the day, I had to remain dedicated to historical accuracy.

A war between Europeans is a civil war.

A woman's biography - with about eight famous historical exceptions - so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.

A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Because the New Testament provides the primary historical source for information on the resurrection, many critics during the 19th century attacked the reliability of these biblical documents.

Beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country

Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.

Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.

Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Bombing is not especially inhumane. War itself is inhumane and the bombing plane, which is used to paralyse industry and transport, is a relatively civilised weapon. 'Normal' or 'legitimate' warfare is just as destructive of inanimate objects and enormously so of human lives.

Bloomberg weighed three hundred pounds. This itself was historical. I revered his weight. It was an affirmation of humanity's reckless potential; it went beyond legend and returned through mist to the lovely folly of history. To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity.

Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.

By geo-historical standards, today's atmospheric CO2 levels are remarkably - indeed dangerously - low.  We need CO2 in the air to support plant growth and agricultural yields, and more would be better.

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature--for instance in a biological survey of evolution--we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.

But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.

But we cannot just take this historical fact for granted. We must make it live.

By establishing reading societies, and subscription libraries, and taking these under our direction, and supplying them through our labors, we may turn the public mind which way we will.

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.

Californias red-legged frogs are part of our historical, literary and cultural heritage, ... It is critically important that we ensure that there will always be frogs jumping here in Calaveras County, and in other places, too.

By the end of this decade we will live under the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations ... a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable.

Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.

Cases of genocide carried out as policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the oral histories of Indigenous communities.

Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.

Christianity is a very historical religion - it makes specific claims that are open to testing.

Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.

Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind--that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.

Citizens often think of a state's interests in terms of the promotion of ideals such as democracy, a particular way of life, or other values which they endorse or see as part of their historical continuity and identity. In this domain as in others values are not fixed, and so a state's interests are dynamic and in a constant state of negotiation and construction.

Collins masterfully blends fact and fiction...transcends the historical thriller.

Coconut oil has been described as the “World's Healthiest Dietary Oil”. There is a mountain of historical evidence and medical research to verify this fact

Communities of tract houses, plopped on a grid, represent a way of throwing historical forms around like bouillabaisse.

Co-mingling really disturbs a lot of the purists, who want to see the historical and cultural divides instead of the meshing.

Communism is Utopia, that is nowhere. It is the avatar of all our religious eschatologies: the coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Christ, nirvana. It is not a historical prospect, but a current mythology. Socialism, by contrast, is a realizable historical system which may one day be instituted in the world.

Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about. ... In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing.

Consensual paranoia - the pathology of the normal person who is a member of a war-justifying society - forms the template from which all the images of the enemy are created. By studying the logic of paranoia, we can see why certain archetypes of the enemy must necessarily recur, no matter what the historical circumstances.